Living in the time when majorities are too small

[Model35mech]

a time when small majorities lead to blackmail hacks by radicals?

I remember a time when the US democracy was taught to students in Civics classes as a game of compromise. But that no longer holds.

We've seen Sinema and Manchin obstructing the Democratic Party's goals in the waning weeks of Democratic control of both houses and the presidency. In that special window we might have wished to have been spent on getting everything that could be done, done.

And now we see a similar problem with intra-party obstructionism in the R's trying to elect a speaker.

It's a time of peculiar math. More and more equal representation of the left and right produces smaller majorities... under the old paradigm we might have expected legislators to recognize that and invoke compromise and cooperation that seems to become -more- necessary.

But, at least as it is represented in the media, we don't see an increase in compromise or sharing between the parties. What we see is that smaller and smaller majorities mean radicals have greater and greater ability to successfully obstruct projects/agendas of their own parties. Rather than promoting broad consensus on less radical bills, this hacking/highjacking/blackmailing of compromise maintains the politics of radical minority agendas

This obstructionism also seems to be confused with true leadership power. It isn't. Obstructing radicals are no more leaders of the legislative bodies than a hostage taking blackmailer is a community leader.

But they ARE opportunists, of the worst type. They exploit small majorities for radical advantage where, for practical math reasons, compromise ought to be promoted.

Yes, this is what our Democracy looks like. We either tolerate/endorse this as a feature, or find paths to bigger majorities, or evolve/accept systems of voting which protect against radical minorities blackmailing the will of the majorities.

[FakeNoose]

1. I think there will always be give-and-take in the legislature

It was sort of built that way, to allow for political parties to gain or lose prominence. We can handle those ups and downs pretty well I think. The problem we're having now is actually two-fold: the news media industry is no longer independent, and the Supreme Court is no longer impartial. The vast wealth that's available to certain people, and their willingness to part with some of that wealth in order to get what THEY want - that's what has brought these two things about.

Our economy is so out of balance right now that the 99.9% of Americans who aren't billionaires will never be able to overcome the advantage that the billionaires have gained in the last 20 or so years. (Really it started with Reagan, and the growth snow-balled with Dubya and Chump.) How do we tip the scales so that a tiny bit of advantage comes back to the middle class Americans? Well we can start with taxing the ultra-wealthy. We can also stop giving them a pass every time they break our laws and blackmail us. It's never going to be easy but the longer we wait the harder it's going to be.

[Model35mech]

3. I'm all for compromise & give and take, instransigence not so much

which isn't to say that truly principled, reasoned application of, for example, filibuster can't sometimes be important and useful. But there are ways for the filibuster to be ended by the majority.

Just as a matter of observation...

We are in a time of near equity between parties. But the parties are strongly divided in opposition to each other. That strong opposition really stands in the way of compromise between the parties. Making between party compromise very difficult.

Within parties, the current and recent small majorities within the parties in Congress create a circumstance where rather than moving toward compromise, the negotiations tend to be in poor faith, as one or more side in the negotiation is intransigent.

This doesn't move us toward the middle, compromise position that has long been seen as a good thing. Rather the situation we are in seems to be one where radicals are empowered to be obstructive, intransigent, blackmailers.

[Crepuscular]

2. ...

The natural evolution of slim majorities is the transition to coalition governments. The first step may be coalitions created by caucuses, not by third parties but such an evolution may well finally stimulate the establishment of viable third parties in this country.

As is becoming apparent, you don't need a majority in either the house or the senate to obstruct agendas and steer legislative directions, you just need a small minority that is willing to dig in on their core issues but go along with one of the other parties to create a majority, most of the time. Not saying this is a good thing, just the reality of the current situation.

Currently, elected independents such as King and Sanders reliably caucus with one party and are defacto members of that party but imagine if there were a dozen or so truly independent Senators, who voted with either party depending on the specific issue. They would wield a disproportionate amount of power within that body.

I can see that scenario evolving in the next decade or so, as the political divide becomes more evenly entrenched and gridlock becomes the norm.